A Study On Empathy In Counseling: Measurement And Relationship With Personality Traits

Empathy is one of the most important part in all counseling process. It can be defined as a skill/strategy, or the quality that the counselors must have. Foreign researchers have done a lot of work on this and they have obtained great progress, but such empirical study was not started in China. The measurement of empathy still has some problems in the previous studies. The validity of the measurement was not ideal, and the individual differences in empathic ability were not be given enough attention to. The aim of this study is discussing how to measure empathic ability and the relationship between personality traits and empathy. The study is consisted of two parts. The first part compares two measurement approaches, discusses the correlations and differences between attribution conformity as well as match of emotions and observers ratings. The second part discusses the relationship between The Big Five and the level and aptitude of empathy.The participants of this study are 27 counselors in professional counseling organization. The research materials are collected from their 81 counseling sessions. After correlation and regression analyses, the results are listed hereinafter.1) There is significant correlation between attribution conformity and the empathic level of observers ratings (Sig.=0.01, r_R=0.306). There is no significant correlation between match of emotion and the empathic level of observer ratings. Both of the two measurements have some problems on validity. The questionnaire measurement pays more attention on the interior empathic experience of the counselors. While the observers rating cares more about the external empathic behaviors of the counselors.2) Agreeable is one factor in The Big Five, it has significant correlation with the cognitive empathy in questionnaire (r_R =0.402). The openness factor also has significant correlation with the cognitive empathy in observer rating (r_R =0.401 ).But in regression analysis, these two factors have no significant predictable effect to the cognitive empathy.3) The extraversion factor has significant correlation with the affective empathy in questionnaire (r_R =0.384). All factors in The Big Five have no significant correlation with the affective empathy in observer rating. In regression analysis, all factors have no significant predictable effect to the affective empathy.